Shades of participation: The evolution of the participatory approaches in the Museum of Cultures in Milan

The present paper offers an empirical investigation of the participation practices undertaken in a museum of culture aimed to foster social inclusion, emancipation, and authentic representations of foreign communities. This case study analysis illustrates and problematizes how the promotion of democratic ideals is typically rife with tensions, contradictions, and paradoxical outcomes when concretely pursued through definite organizational arrangements. Leveraging the literature on contradictions, dialectics, and paradoxes in organizational processes, we identify a complex of oppositional dynamics taking place through time and across a multi-level configuration. Openness/closure and centralization/distribution of power are the two high-order oppositions that shape and are shaped by other context-specific oppositions that concatenate in a processual way. Finally, this overall process, although emergent and unplanned, has the effect of initiating a significant organizational learning process fed by the very oppositional dynamics that create potential obstacles in the achievement of democratic-oriented goals.